months, but would have made it possible for the parliamentary majority to dictate its conditions to the Tsar, who was already regretting the concessions he had made. Having just won a crushing victory in the elections, the liberals and socialists could have said to the Tsar's ministers: "We have Russia behind us and we have Europe behind us. Your treasury is empty, your credit is exhausted. If you recognize our full rights as a responsible government, then we will confirm your taxes and sanction your loan. If you deny us our rights, then we are convinced that you will find money neither in London nor in Paris to finance your repressions." But a large loan was already realized in Paris and London in March 1906, and in May, when the Duma convened, it found itself face to face with a government that had nothing to fear from Russia and nothing more to expect from Europe. Europe gave it the ability to pay its Cossacks. For two generations we closed the money market to the Tsars and opened it three months earlier than it should have been. If we had waited those three months, as the Russian liberal press and the progressive parties asked us to do, the progressive parties would, in all probability, have triumphed. Cossacks can do little if there is no financier standing behind them. But no parliament can effectively use the traditional weapon of the budget if foreign banks have already in advance satisfied the despot's needs. The decision in this case depended on London. The Paris banks, weary of the burden of supporting unstable Russian chaos, made it a condition of supporting this loan that English banks take part in this profitable burden. It depended on the English banks to insist on the short delay necessary to obtain the Duma's sanction. One might say that "business is business"; one cannot expect that a banker, when offered a large commission for placing a loan, would weigh all the consequences his actions might have for the freedom of a foreign people" (pp. 225-228).

"With all our bribes we still did not buy Russian loyalty and did not prevent Russia from flirting with our German rival. And yet all the cards were in our hands. Germany can do much for Russia, but it cannot lend her money. If we had imposed conditions before granting the loan, and if we had even stopped the flow of gold, we could have acquired some control over Russian policy. If France had supported us (and we earned her support during the Moroccan crisis), we could have said to Russia: 'Until Persia is evacuated, there will be no money.' After all, Persia for Russia is a luxury; money is a necessity" (229).

"Europe was showing, or was making a show of showing, certain efforts that were of little avail in preventing the outbreak of the Balkan Wars. These efforts failed because they were insincere. As we now know, Russia not only did not strive to prevent war, but in fact organized it, directing the formation of the Balkan League. At the very moment when it joined the concert of powers, declaring that none of the allies would be allowed to retain conquered territory, it affixed its seal to the treaty of partition and took upon itself the post of arbiter in the division of territory. Such double-dealing makes all these concerts of powers ineffectual. All these wars could have been prevented if French banks had been forbidden to finance the belligerents. But they were not forbidden to do so, because Russia wanted it otherwise" (pp. 230-231).

* — provisions on payment of wages in kind, Ed.

"On the other hand, the system known by the name of peonage is widespread throughout Latin America, and the capital by which it operates is often foreign, and sometimes English. It is the rule in Mexico and Brazil and, possibly, in all the more backward republics of South America. The victim, usually a native, but sometimes a white man or a mulatto, falls into debt dependence upon a planter or merchant and, under the laws of Latin America concerning debtors and creditors, which know nothing of the Truck Acts *, becomes in fact his slave until the debt is repaid. But the debt is never repaid; the planter keeps the books. Under the cover of this transparent fiction of debt, the buying and selling of slaves occurs, entire villages are destroyed, peasant-landholders are reduced to the level of serfs; entire tribes are deported to distant regions where they are subjected to oppression—

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